On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the presidency of George W. Bush changed instantly. In a new collection of never-before-seen photographs from that day, the president can be seen responding to the worst terrorist attack in United States history — an event that would redefine his time in office and propel the nation into two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The images, which were given to FRONTLINE through a Freedom of Information Act request, provide a new window into President Bush’s actions on 9/11 — from the initial scramble for information upon learning of the attack at an elementary school in Florida, to his meetings with senior staff throughout the day, and his return to the White House that evening, where in an address to the nation he vowed to “find those responsible and bring them to justice.”

The images were released Friday in response to a FOIA request by Colette Neirouz Hanna, coordinating producer for the Kirk Documentary Group, which has covered the legacy of 9/11 in multiple films for FRONTLINE, including Bush’s War, Cheney’s Law, and the forthcoming investigation The Secret History of ISIS.

They were taken by Eric Draper, who was the president’s personal photographer.

“Capturing that story was difficult,” Draper told the website Storybench in a 2015 interview. “I had to focus on being in the right place at the right time and push back the emotions that I was feeling to truly capture the story. Everyone did their job that day and I knew my job was to have a crystal clear focus to document what was in front of me, for others to place it into history.”

...He’s a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother’s connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony. Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg’s picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president’s willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes’s boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies—what Rhodes and others call a “narrative”—that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.[…]

As Rhodes admits, it’s not that hard to shape the narrative. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” Rhodes said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”...

One side effect of Donald Trump’s securing the GOP presidential nod: Republicans might no longer turn out to vote for their House and Senate candidates in the remaining congressional primaries.

The down-ballot effect could be especially pronounced in California’s June 7 Senate primary, where Democrats and Republicans will be on the same ballot in the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer (D). The top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to the general election....

“At this point in time, it’s increasingly likely that we will see a Democrat on Democrat runoff,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant based in California....

Polls have consistently shown Harris leading the California race, with one out this week putting her support at 29 percent, followed by Sanchez with 18 percent.

The next closest competitor is Republican Tom Del Becarro, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, who drew 10 percent support in the KABC/Survey USA poll. Close on his heels are Ron Unz, a Republican activist with 8 percent and Duf Sundheim, a former state party chairman, with 7 percent.

The poll, which was released Monday, before Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the presidential race, noted that a competitive presidential primary might have boosted Republican turnout and given one of the Republicans a shot at overtaking Sanchez....

The California Republican Party held its convention last weekend, drawing hundreds of members to hear the three presidential candidates make their pitches. But on Sunday, only a few dozen people showed up to hear Del Becarro, Sundheim and Unz speak.

Del Becarro and Sundheim said they believe that Republican voters will still show up for the primary.

Watching “An Inconvenient Truth” is sort of like going back in time. Back to a world where flip phones were cool and “Futurama” was still putting out new episodes. A world where a bitter presidential candidate was trying to rebrand himself as an environmental crusader.

But have Gore’s warnings, which were alarming to many in 2006, come true?

...Gore’s been harping on global warming since at least the late 1980s, but it wasn’t until 2006 he discovered a way to become massively wealthy off making movies about it and investing in government-subsidized green energy....

...Kilimanjaro Still Has Snow...

...Gore also claims temperature rise from increases in man-made carbon dioxide emissions were “uninterrupted and intensifying.” He goes on to claim heatwaves will become more common, like the one that killed 35,000 people across Europe in 2003.

Sounds terrifying — until you actually look at what happened to global temperature after Gore’s film was released....

...The North Pole Still Has Ice...

Gore also claimed the Arctic could be ice-free in the coming decades. He said “within the next 50 to 70 years, it could be completely gone.”...

HRWF NOTE: Catharine Baker is running for re-election in Assembly District 16. This is the TOP TARGET in the state and she is the only Republican elected in the Bay Area; It's because of her one vote that Democrats don't have the 2/3rd's super majority that they need to raise our taxes.

The campaign office is up and running. They have phone banks and they always like having people to walk precincts. Catharine would love to see our club get involved and help on any weekend before the primary in June. While for most of you, this is a drive, they wanted to let you know they have mobile phone banking which allows one to stay at home and make phone calls just as long as they have a computer and a phone.

Please think about it. Catharine needs and appreciates all the help. They can set up a link for us to start to mobile phone bank. Call Annette for details if you'd like to help.

Why? Mr. Riley, who is black, has attracted some negative attention since his publication in 2014 of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. Professor Singal feared that whatever controversy Riley had attracted so far would be amplified once he set foot on Virginia Tech’s campus....

Disinvitations from college officials are becoming distressingly common and not quite as shocking as they were a few years ago. The William F. Buckley Jr. Society at Yale last week held its Second Annual Disinvitation Dinner. Last year it honored George Will, disinvited from Scripps College for expressing doubts about “rape culture” on campus. This year, it honored former New York Police commissioner Ray Kelly, who was disinvited from Brown University right at the podium where he was scheduled to speak. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education keeps a summary list of disinvitations, but even FIRE can hardly keep up with the disgraceful trend. It has yet to note, for instance, Suzanne Venker’s disinvitation by “Uncomfortable Learning,” the student group at Williams College that had invited Venker, a critic of feminism. Uncomfortable Learning exists to bring controversial speakers to campus but was overwhelmed by the backlash to Venker’s scheduled appearance....

For the past six months, cry-bully activists on campuses from Mizzou to Princeton to Dartmouth have bowled over craven administrators who have deferred to their demands and declined to exercise jurisdiction. The Riley disinvitation shows just how low campus authorities are willing to bow to the fancies of their students. Higher education can offer intellectual freedom little more than lip service when it authorizes the heckler’s veto.

...Looking back 25 years ago to the election of 2016, it is clear that Clinton’s campaign team was badly mistaken when it thought that the vast middle of American politics would blame the Republicans for the violence outside the convention. Every pinko, commie, and socialist freak with a cause and a Soros subsidy descended upon Cleveland, and the ensuing chaos was supposed to show that Donald Trump brought violence and disorder in his wake. The Democrat lovefest to follow was supposed to provide a stark contrast, with Hillary bringing peace and blessed calm. But Americans didn’t see it that way.

In 1968, the Democrats showed themselves incapable of maintaining order in a Democrat city with a Democrat president. This time, it was a Democrat city and a Democrat president allowing their allies to violently assault their political opponents. “The cops, I love the Cleveland cops, but the mayor, the Democrat mayor of Cleveland, a very bad mayor, is ordering them to stand down,” shouted the nominee during his extemporaneous nomination speech. “Just like Benghazi! What is it with Democrats telling our beautiful military and cops to always stand down? Sad!” Of course, Trump had no evidence of any such order, but it sounded like it might be true and that was enough….

...Hillary initially refused to debate Trump. “I will not give a platform to his kind of sexist hate speech,” she intoned, and Trump pounced.

“I used to call her Crooked Hillary, which she is, and Naggin’ Hillary, and she’s still naggy, believe me, she nags us all the time! But now I call her Scared Hillary because she’s scared of me. And if she’s scared of me, how is she going to stand up to the very bad people out there and protect America? I mean, I wish she had been Scared Hillary back when she voted to invade Iraq, which was a disaster. But we can’t have our wonderful military under someone who is so scared. We need someone who’ll stand up and defend our country, which she is scared to do. Sad!”

Hillary finally agreed to a debate, and it was a disaster. She was prim, prepared, and utterly stiff while Trump was loose, limber, and lacerating. She called him sexist, and he went for the throat: “I love women, not like your husband did, which was very shameful and which you tolerated. And a lot of young people who weren’t around then don’t know about how you covered up when Bill behaved very badly to women but when they learn about it it’s going to be very bad for you because you were very bad to the women. And everyone knows if you weren’t a woman you wouldn’t even be here. Sad!” ...

...Despite the media’s attempt to tarnish his reputation and make his life a living hell, Trump rose above the hate and divorced amicably from Ivana in 1991 – where she walked away with a reported $25 million. Trump even poked fun at the scandal when he and Ivana starred in a Pizza Hut commercial together in 1995.

In the 1988 interview, Oprah asks Trump if he would ever consider running for president. The real estate mogul made it clear that although he disagrees with the direction America was headed, presidency wasn’t a priority. However, if Trump noticed the country was trapped in such a dark, deep hole — he felt it was his calling to run for president and lead the country in a positive direction. It appears that time is now.

“I probably wouldn’t [run for president],” Trump told Oprah. “But I do get tired of seeing what’s happening with this country and if it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally because I really am tired of seeing what’s happening with this country.”

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“Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” .....Robert A. Heinlein quotes (American science-fiction Writer, 1907-1988)